Since at least the 1960s, the European Union (EU) has offered various kinds of non-reciprocal trade preferences for developing countries. Originally, these trade preferences had at least two policy goals: (i) to increase export volumes for developing countries and thereby boost their export...

Standards and technical regulations which govern the admissibility of imported goods into an economy raise costs of exporters entering new markets, and may have a particularly high impact on firms seeking to export from developing countries. Yet standards may also have a positive side, such as...

Standards and technical regulations which govern the admissibility of imported goods into an economy raise costs of exporters entering new markets, and may have a particularly high impact on firms seeking to export from developing countries. Yet standards may also have a positive side, such as...

The origin of this paper was the need to provide import and export functions for the IUI-model of the Swedish economy used in the 1979 forecasting exercise, later on extended to support the analysis in the KRAN-project. This paper summarizes the results of the estimates of price elasticity’s...

Despite the strong pace of globalization, the distance effect on trade is persistent or even growing over time (Disdier and Head, 2008). To solve this distance puzzle, we use the recently developed gravity equation estimator from Helpman, Melitz and Rubinstein (2008), HMR henceforth. Using three...

Almost all WTO dispute panels exceed their statutory time limits. This is often seen to indicate a more general problem for panels to manage their tasks. The time required varies considerably across panels however, suggesting that they do not face the same problems. To shed light on these...

The paper argues that focusing only on disputes formally raised in the WTO Dispute Settlement system underestimates the extent of trade conflict resolution within the WTO. Both the SPS and TBT Committees address a significant number of ‘specific trade concerns’ (STCs) that in the...

This study contributes to the debate concerning the appropriate role of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) in in WTO dispute settlement. Its distinguishing feature is that it seeks to address this relationship in light of the reason why the parties have chosen to separate their...

The purpose of the study is to propose interpretations of the National Treatment (NT) provision included in Art. III GATT, unbound by case-law interpretations of this provision. To make such proposals, we need to understand the role of the provision in the agreement. To this end, we first...

This study is part of The American Law Institute (ALI) project Legal and Economic Principles of World Trade Law. The project aims to analyze the central instrument in the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement for the regulation of trade in goods – The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade...